"THIS IS JIM HIGHTOWER SAYING . . . "

A REAL JOBS BILL

There is a bill in Congress that the media is ignoring, but you and I should get behind. Sponsored by Rep. Matthew Martinez, it's an emergency jobs bill to begin using the productive capacity of millions of laid-off people who are now flooding America's job market-and finding zero opportunity.

This bill doesn't create low-paying, no-benefit, temporary "jobettes," but good jobs at union pay, giving people a chance to develop their skills and work their way into the middle class by doing work that America needs doing.

Work like rebuilding our schools, bridges and other parts of our crumbling infrastructure. Bill Clinton is full of rhetoric about "building a bridge to the 21st Century," but most of us just need a safe bridge across the local river. So, let's put Americans to work on construction projects like bridges.

Also, let's put these jobs where the greatest needs are, giving priority to laid-off workers, low-income youth and to others who most need the opportunity, and let's provide top-flight training to improve America's workplace skills.

Won't this cost a bundle? Yes. About $250 billion. But we get back schools, roads, bridges and other real needs, plus we train and employ thousands of good workers who spend their wages in our local communities, spreading the wealth at the grassroots level.

OK, Hightower, where you gonna get this money?

Get it from the speculators and spoilers, bosses and bankers who have ripped off billions from the people and done nothing for America but feather their own nest with it. Let's assess a tiny sales tax just on international currency exchanges. Assess a sales tax of 1/4 th of one percent on the value of these transactions-and you'll raise $250 billion a year.

To learn more about the Job Creation and Infrastructure Restoration Act, contact Rep. Matthew Martinez at (202) 225-5464.

SUBSIDIZING THE ARMS MERCHANTS

We're number one! We're number one! We're number one! The USA's weapons in-dustry has become the world's Number One arms merchant, selling everything from assault guns to fighter jets, peddling our destructive wares not only to democratic governments, but also to Third World dictators who use this arsenal to repress and kill their people.

Of course, General Electric, Lockheed and the other weapons makers did not get to be number one by themselves-you and I helped them, providing tax subsidies for marketing their products.

Just for the heck of it, let's add up the arms sales welfare we taxpayers give to these conglomerates:
We pay nearly half a billion bucks in salaries to 6,500 federal employees who work full time to promote and finance these sales by the weapons peddlers;

We pay $27 million a year to put on military arms expos around the world, so potential buyers can come "kick the tires" of an F-15 and check out the other products the companies are pushing;

Pay attention to this one: We spend $3.2 BILLION a year in grants to foreign countries to buy American-made weapons-that's right, we GIVE THEM THE MONEY to buy hardware from Lockheed and the rest;

Then there's a special "Economic Development" fund to provide $2 BILLION a year more to help countries offset the cost of buying arms from U.S. companies;

We also loan money to countries to buy our weapons; if they default on the loans, we taxpayers eat the loss to the tune of another billion a year.

Total tally of these and other subsidies is $7.6 BILLION, each and every year, taken from our pockets and handed to the arms merchants.

This doesn't count the fact that we also pay for the research and development costs to make these weapons! What a racket!

U.S. IN ARMS RACE WITH ITSELF

Oh, good, there's a new toy on the market. This is not the latest "Tickle Me Elmo," but a war toy, and you're just going to be tickled pink to hear this story.

It's about the F-22, a state-of-the-art, double-winged, fighter jet that combines stealth technology with supersonic speed, agility and power. This baby comes in both your one-seat version and as a two-seater.

Sticker price: $160 million. Each. The Air Force has ordered 438 of them, for a total tab of $70 billion, plus change.

Before we shell out 70 billion of our hard earned tax dollars shouldn't we ask whether we can afford it and whether we even need it?

For example, Washington says we must whack some $180 billion out of our Medicare benefits to balance the federal budget, but I say we should cut the F-22, not Medicare.

We already have two powerhouse stealth fighters--the F-15 and the F-117--that are far better than anything any potential enemy can put up in the skies against us. The F-117, for example, did just fine against the Iraqis in the Gulf War.

Now get this: The F-22 was designed to counter a new fighter the Soviets were developing. Hello. The Soviet Union has disappeared, and so did their plane. But our Pentagon, in collusion with the huge contractor Lockheed-Martin, still plans to spend billions on an F-22 that will have no one to fight.

The Pentagon, though, says other countries now have the F-15, so we need this new plane to combat them. How did other countries get F-15s? We sold the planes to them-at discount prices, too, subsidized by us taxpayers.

Guess what? We're in an arms race with ourselves! To help stop this stupidity, call the Campaign for New Priorities: (202) 544-8222. .

PLAYING POLITICS WITH THE CPI

Ralph Waldo Emerson said of a certain house guest: "The more he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." Well look out, because here comes an effort by the Powers That Be to "adjust" the Consumer Price Index - the official measure of our country's rate of inflation.

The Republican leaders of congress have trotted out a panel of economists, headed by former George Bush-aide Michael Boskin, to assert that the CPI overstates the amount of inflation.

What's it to you? Better count your spoons. Things like the amount of social security benefits you get and the amount of taxes you pay are determined by this cost-of-living adjustment. If the CPI is determined to be too high, as Boskin's panel claims, then you'll get less in social security and pay more in taxes.

Boskin says the CPI is 1.1 percent too high. Doesn't sound like much-but it would add up to a $110 billion cut in social security payments over ten years, and a $180 billion tax increase-mostly on middle-class and poor folks.

How did Boskin's bandits come up with that 1.1 percent? They pulled it out of thin air. Indeed, most economists either think the CPI is about right or is too low.

But that thinking doesn't fit with what the Powers That Be want, so Congress only put economists on the panel who would agree to say that the CPI is too high.

To give this political grab for our spoons an academic rationale, this panel claims that while the prices of many things we buy are indeed higher, their quality is improved, therefore the price has not really gone up.

Clever, huh? But what about the things whose quality has gotten worse-everything from shoddy appliances to our health-care system? Oh, Boskin's bunch didn't factor this in.

To get the truth on the CPI, call the Economic Policy Institute (202) 775-8810.

Copyright 1997, Hightower and Associates, Inc. Contact us directly at: hightower@essential.org

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